Human Under Construction: 2011-12

2011-12-29

"Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank, and buy a revolver."

Countess Markievicz, 19th century Irish revolutionary.

2011-12-28

Look Away

From The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious
W. M. Hunt

The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious presents a wonderfully idiosyncratic and compelling collection of photographs assembled around a particular theme: in each image, the gaze of the subject is averted, the face obscured or the eyes firmly closed. The pictures present a catalog of anti-portraiture, characterized at first glance by what its subjects conceal, not by what the camera reveals.

And it's time, time, time that you lost...

And it's Time Time

Time

And it's Time Time

Time

And it's Time Time Time

That you love

And it's

Time Time Time

And it's

Time

Time Time that you love.

Well, the smart money's on Harlow,
And the moon is in the street.
The shadow boys are breaking all the laws.
And you're east of East St. Louis,
And the wind is making speeches,
And the rain sounds like a round of applause.

Napoleon is weeping in the Carnival saloon,
His invisible fiance is in the mirror.
The band is going home,
It's raining hammers, it's raining nails.

Yes, it's true, there's nothing left for him down here.

Chorus:

And it's Time Time Time
And it's Time Time Time
And it's Time Time Time
That you love
And it's Time Time Time

And they all pretend they're Orphans,
And their memory's like a train.
You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away.
And the things you can't remember,
Tell the things you can't forget. That
History puts a saint in every dream.

Well she said she'd steak around
Until the bandages came off.

But these mamas boys just don't know when to quit.
And Matilda asks the sailors "are those dreams
Or are those prayers?
So just close your eyes, son
And this won't hurt a bit."

Chorus

Well, things are pretty lousy for a calendar girl.
The boys just dive right off the cars
And splash into the street.

And when she's on a roll she pulls a razor
From her boot and a thousand
Pigeons fall around her feet.

So put a candle in the window
And a kiss upon his lips,
Till the dish outside the window fills with rain
Just like a stranger with the weeds in your heart And play the fiddler off till i come back again.

Well it's time, time, time.

             And it's Time Time Time

                              And it's Time Time Time
                                                  That

You                    Love

And it's Time Time Time



                                             And it's Time
                                                                Time                                                Time

                            That you love

And it's time, time, time.

Retake the falling snow: each drifting flake
Shapeless and slow, unsteady and opaque,
A dull dark white against the day’s pale white
And abstract larches in the neutral light.
And then the gradual and dark blue
As night unites the viewer and the view,
And in the morning diamonds of frost
Express amazement: Whose spurred feet have crossed
From left to right the blank page of the road?

2011-12-20

For most of us, there is only the unattended

Moment, the moment in and out of time,

The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music

While the music lasts.

T. S. Eliot, from “The Dry Salvages”

"You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other."
- Carl Sagan

2011-12-05

Business as usual

Undaunted by a night of German air raids in which his store front was blasted, a shopkeeper opens up the morning after for "business as usual" in London.

From The Atlantic